AMERICA’S INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM AT 65: Meeting America’s Transportation Needs with a Reliable, Safe & Well-Maintained National Highway Network PHOTO CREDIT: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY JUNE 2021 Founded in 1971, TRIP ® of Washington, DC, is a nonprofit organization that researches, evaluates and distributes economic and technical data on surface transportation issues. TRIP is sponsored by insurance companies, equipment manufacturers, distributors and suppliers; businesses involved in highway and transit engineering and construction; labor unions; and organizations concerned with efficient and safe surface transportation. Executive Summary At sixty-five years old, an age at which many Americans are considering retirement and reduced workloads, the Interstate Highway System is deteriorating, its traffic load of cars and trucks continues to increase, and the system lacks an adequate plan for its long-term health. The Interstate Highway System remains the workhorse of the U.S. transportation system: heavily traveled and providing the most important link in the nation’s supply chain, and the primary connection between and within urban communities. The importance of the Interstate Highway System and the reliable movement of goods it provides was heightened during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recovery. But, America’s Interstate highways are wearing out and showing signs of their advanced age, often heavily congested, and in need of significant reconstruction, modernization and expansion. In 2015, as part of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, the U.S. Congress asked the Transportation Research Board (TRB), a division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, to conduct a study to determine actions needed to upgrade and restore the Interstate Highway System to fulfill its role of safely and efficiently meeting the nation’s future critical personal, commercial and military travel needs. In 2019, the TRB provided Congress with a report that found that the nation’s Interstates are heavily congested and aging, with large portions of the system in need of major reconstruction and modernization. The report found that addressing the needs of the Interstate Highway System will require more than a doubling of current investment to adequately improve the system’s condition, reliability and safety, and that the restoration of the nation’s Interstate Highway System should be based on strong federal leadership of a collaborative effort with the states. TRIP’s America’s Interstate Highway System at 65 report provides the latest information on the Interstate system, including pavement conditions, bridge conditions, travel trends, traffic congestion levels, truck use, and traffic safety. It reviews the findings of the TRB Interstate report and concludes with recommended actions - based on the findings of the TRB report - to ensure that the system is able to meet the nation’s transportation needs. 1 TRB INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM REPORT REQUESTED BY CONGRESS In 2015, as part of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, the U.S. Congress requested a report evaluating the condition of the Interstate Highway System and providing recommendations on actions required to restore and upgrade the System to meet the growing and shifting transportation demands of the 21st Century. The report was conducted by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The findings of the TRB report, released in 2019, include: The Interstate Highway System has a persistent and growing backlog of physical and operational deficiencies as a result of age, heavy use and deferred reinvestment, and is in need of major reconstruction and modernization. Most roadway segments of the Interstate Highway System retain their original underlying foundations and need to be completely rebuilt from the subbase up. The repeated resurfacing of Interstate highways is not addressing the deterioration of roadway subbases. Repeated resurfacing – rather than addressing underlying foundational issues - provides diminishing returns as additional resurfacing results in increasingly shorter periods of pavement smoothness and is likely to result in higher lifecycle costs than periodic reconstruction. The modernization of the Interstate Highway System needs to include the following: reconstruction of the majority of Interstate highways and bridges, including their foundations; the upgrade of most interchanges to improve their function and safety; the addition of capacity along existing corridors, the construction of new routes and the conversion of some existing routes to Interstate standards; the modification of some urban segments to maintain connectivity while remediating economic and social disruption; and, further improvement of highway safety features. To address the physical and operational deficiencies identified in the TRB report, annual investment in the Interstate Highway System should be increased by approximately two-and-a- half times, from its current level of $23 billion in 2018 to $57 billion annually over the next 20 years. The restoration of the nation’s Interstate Highway System will require strong federal leadership and a robust federal-state partnership. INTERSTATE USE AND CHARACTERISTICS The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, which has been called the most ambitious public works project built since the Roman Empire, is the most critical link in the nation’s transportation system. The Interstate Highway System, which includes 2.6 percent of all roadway lane miles in the U.S., carries 26 percent of the nation’s vehicle travel. The 48,482-mile Interstate Highway System includes 10 transcontinental routes and highways varying in length from 18 miles to more than 3,000 miles. 2 Since funding of the Interstate system was approved in 1956 to 2019, annual vehicle miles of travel (VMT) in the U.S. increased by 427 percent, from 626 billion miles driven, to approximately 3.3 trillion miles driven. From 1956 to 2019, the number of vehicles in the nation increased by 324 percent, from 65 million vehicles to 276 million vehicles. The nation’s population increased by 96 percent, from 168 million to 329 million during this time. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, vehicle travel on the U.S. Interstate Highway System dropped by as much as 45 percent in April 2020 (as compared to vehicle travel during the same month the previous year) but rebounded to six percent below April 2019 (the previous pre-COVID-19 April) levels by April 2021. INTERSTATE HISTORY The need for a transcontinental highway system in the U.S. was recognized as early as 1919, and an initial Interstate plan was completed in the late 1930s. But it was not until Congress approved a suitable funding mechanism in 1956 that the Interstate Highway System became a reality. In 1919, Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower participated in the U.S. Army’s first transcontinental motor convoy, from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, California. The trip took 62 days, largely due to inadequate roads and highways. In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed a committee to draft a proposal to fund a national system of Interstate Highways. The initial proposal, subsequently dismissed by Congress, called for financing a national Interstate system through bond financing. Nationwide construction of the Interstate Highway System began in 1956 following the approval of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Some segments of urban and regional highways built prior to 1956 were later incorporated into the Interstate Highway System. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on June 29, 1956, called for the construction of a 41,000-mile system of Interstate highways. The Act 3 called for the Interstates to be paid for by taxes on motorists, such as the federal motor fuel tax, with the federal government paying 90 percent of the initial construction costs. The federal motor fuel tax was set at three cents-per-gallon in 1956. Last increased in 1993, the tax is currently 18.4 cents-per-gallon. Revenue collected from the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal motor fuel tax and the 24.4 cents-per- gallon federal diesel fuel tax are the primary sources of funding for the federal Highway Trust Fund, which distributes funds to state and local governments for highway and bridge repairs as well as other surface transportation improvements, including public transit, pedestrian and bicycling facilities. INTERSTATE ROAD AND BRIDGE CONDITIONS While pavement smoothness and bridge conditions on the Interstate system are acceptable, as the aging system’s foundations continue to deteriorate, most Interstate highways, bridges and interchanges will need to be reconstructed or replaced. Pavements on 11 percent of Interstate highways are in poor or mediocre condition, with three percent rated in poor condition and eight percent rated in mediocre condition. Another nine percent of Interstate pavements are in fair condition and the remaining 80 percent are in good condition. The chart below shows the states with the greatest share of their Interstate highways with pavements in poor condition. Data for all states can be found in the Appendix. INTERSTATE PAVEMENT RANK STATE IN POOR CONDITION 1 Hawaii 23% 2 Delaware 9% 3 New Jersey 9% 4 Louisiana 7% 5 New York 6% 6 Colorado 6% 7 Michigan 6% 8 California 6% 9 Maryland 5% 10 Indiana 5% 11 Pennsylvania 5% 12 Washington